Tuesday, 29 November 2011

A major timber importer on the Charlton riverside

So
– back to the industrial railways book. I'm flicking through at random for one of
the many, many Greenwich and Woolwich industries mentioned.Let’s start with Christie & Vesey Ltd of ‘Riverside
Greenwich’. The book says they were earlier “Christie's Wharf Ltd - (incorporated
3/5/1929”).

It
gives a map reference – but of course Vesey’s Wharf is a block of houses
jutting out into the river at the end of Anchor and Hope Lane. So that’s where
they were??Or is it?

Articles
from railway magazines of the 1920s and 1950s featured the Angerstein railway – still running between
the Blackheath rail tunnel and the river.They tell us that the freehold of 16 acres of the wharf area was acquired
in 1912 by “William Christie and Sand Gravel.Co., Ltd,” who were “large sleeper
importers and creosoters.”They built a “large
creosoting works and sawmills” and thus “the district has become a very
important timber centre”.

They
describe Christie's Wharf as “adjoining Angerstein Wharf”- which means it must
be one of the two wharves still in use by the aggregate firms which operate on
the Angerstein Railway today.

They say
it was completed just after the war – so in the early 1920s– and is “one of the
finest ferro-concrete piers of its type on the Thames”. They say it can take larger
steamers than any other wharf in the reach with 26 ft. 6 in. of water at high
tide spring tides, and 6 ft. at low water with a “proper chalk bed where
steamers may lay in safety”. It is “equipped on the most up-to-date lines, 15
400 ft. in length” and is “a very good example of what might be done on the
Thames banks” and the wharf handles “over 30,000 tons of sleepers and
30,000 tons of timber, deals and telegraph poles” and this is done with “steam
travelling cranes, which run on 4 ft. 8in. roads from the wharf back into the
works”. Christie's Wharf they say can “give steamers loaded with timber quicker
despatch than any other place in the Port of London”. They also describe the railway
tracks on the works, and nine steam travelling cranes are employed in the handling
of the sleepers and timber – and this is where our directory of London industrial
railways comes in and 1953 Ordnance Survey map shows “an internal narrow gauge
tramway - Ten steam cranes operated on the standard gauge lines”

The
1920s railway magazine finally notes that “60,000 tons of timber.... annually… passes over the Southern Railway
Company's …. and during the Baltic season it is no uncommon sight to see train
after train leave the wharf composed entirely of timber traffic”.

What
else can we find? Turning to the ever helpful net Google finds, bizarrely
copies of the Straits Times – and a list
of wills from the 1930s with the headline “Timber
Importer Leaves £69,059.”This refers
to an. Andrew Charles Christie who has died at the age of 54 and which gives
two addresses “Warning Camp House, Warning, Arundel, Sussex" and “5, Royal
Crescent, Brighton”.He was apparently the
chairman of Christie's Wharf – and yes there really is a place called Warning
Camp just outside Arundel, and you can visit the gardens in the summer.Family history sites reveal he was Scottish,
and came from Stirling where his father was a timber importer – and according
to the ancestor hunters so were other family members.

So
– this was clearly a large and important industry which employed a lot of
people. Yet we seem to know very little
about it. It is very likely that there are some remains of it in the shape of
one of the two aggregate wharves.In fact
I understand that the Greenwich planners still call it ‘Christie’s Wharf’
although Christies and their timber are long gone. I am far from clear about
Vesey – since what we now know as Vesey’s wharf is some distance from the Angerstein
railway and must have been a different site.Has anyone any knowledge – ideas?? When did Christie’s cease work? What were their
Scottish connections?? Has anyone the time and inclination to sort all this
out??

2 comments:

I have been fascinated to read the Industrial History of Greenwichparticularly in relation to timber importation, specifically Christie´s Wharf. My grandfather WilliamChristie had his major timber yardsin Glasgow and lived in Ardrossan.There is a report in one of the major Glasgow newspapers in 1913(?) of the burning down of the yard- suffagettes suspected but cannot imagine why. As a child I can remember hearing ot the very much unwelcome entrance of Vesey into the business, possibly necessary due to the loss, as reported, of 20 to 30,000 pounds - a large sum at that time. I did have a copy of a newspaper picture of the two vessels which plied between Scandinavia and the Wharf in London - unfortunately lost and lack the names which I wish I could discover.I do have a picture of Wm Christie with some of his work force loading an LNER railway truck.Look forward to reading anything else which arises.Jean Christie Williams in Spain